


Amnesty

by Flowerbedgrl



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M, Post-Star Trek: Into Darkness, Star Trek: AOS, Star Trek: Into Darkness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-22
Updated: 2013-09-22
Packaged: 2017-12-27 07:39:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,367
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/976186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flowerbedgrl/pseuds/Flowerbedgrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is really a test to see how much interest there is in these characters and story. Martha Landon was Pavel Chekov's love interest (and the only one I recall seeing apart from his ex) in the Original Series. My intention was to create a wider Starfleet organisation set in the new movie 'verse introducing original characters and expanding on ones from canon. </p>
<p>Feedback on anything and everything in welcome.</p></blockquote>





	Amnesty

Whenever anyone had asked Martha Landon what she did for a living- friends from school she hadn’t seen for years, boyfriends and most annoyingly their parents- the answer would never fail to elicit one of two responses. Over-excitement, and a desperate run of questions as if her choice of career had provided her with the all the secrets of the known universe, or horror and an overly dramatic concern for her welfare, as if at any moment she would be pronounced killed in action. She had wondered on many occasion if any other officer in Starfleet had the selfsame issues.

Of course there was always a risk associated with working or living in space, but it was like all anyone ever believed was that if you joined the ‘Fleet that was where you ended up. And that would lead her to argue that no, no-one in Starfleet would end up anywhere without the Corps of Engineers which is where she _actually_ worked.

Without them, without people like her, starships wouldn’t be built, the shipyards that they constructed them in wouldn’t even exist and, actually, she’d only been off-world once, and that was just to Starbase One to oversee the successful launch of a solar array for the lunar colony of New Berlin. Six hours in total and then a shuttle back to San Francisco in time to catch a movie with friends!

And then a mad Romulan decided to blow up Vulcan, before setting his sights on Earth..

And then a massive starship dropped out of the sky, powering towards the bay and crashing into the Financial District, plowing through skyscrapers and into the ground like it was butter and destroying thousands of lives without any effort at all- as if all of mankind’s skill and ingenuity were the work of ants. Worthless and easily washed away..

 

 

* * *

 

Landon hadn’t been in the city when Vengeance fell. She hadn’t even been on the same continent. She’d been in Irkutsk helping in the transfer and installation of one of two massive computer cores into the newest starship under construction there. The alarms were only heard and used in drills, and signified either an attack or the imminent explosion of said starship. The only time in the last thirty years that anyone had heard them had been the Romulan attack..

She had been so convinced that something had gone so horribly wrong with the newly installed warp core that it didn’t sink in that the planet had been attacked until she had slammed into the backs of several welders watching the vid feeds from San Francisco, their faces fixed into such expressions of fear and disbelief that it suffocated the angry scream she’d built up in the last few seconds she thought she’d been running for her life. The destruction on screen had been on a level she couldn’t fully comprehend. That the Federation would be forced to endure not one but two massive attacks on the peace and security it had hard-won in as many years was repulsive to her, making her feel physically ill and saddened on a level she would never be able to put into words.

But not one engineer on the massive site had long to think about it. Even as Vengeance settled to a halt somewhere close to Little Saigon, the SCE commander was ordering all personnel to shuttles with the clear intention to send as many as possible to the crash site to aid in search and rescue efforts. If Martha had run fast before she moved so quickly then that she wasn’t able to fully recall the journey to the hangers. Men and women piled into the waiting shuttles with overalls and goggles and soot from the welding torches still on them- others still had some of their more portable equipment with them, not even having taken the time to return them to stores. It was utter madness as the pilots rushed pre-flight checks and got them into the air moments after the shuttle doors closed.

The flight itself was a blur of clouds and rushed orders as to who should report where. She had found herself staggering out after a rough landing and being assigned to a team of Starfleet and civilian emergency response teams heading towards the Broadway Tunnel to assist in the excavation and evacuation of those trapped beneath. Rubble and earth and what looked suspiciously like a couple of thousand tons of a ships torpedo firing system lay strewn across the road above the tunnel entrance where a ‘Fleet vehicle dropped them off. But the most dominating feature was what appeared to be the top half of what once must have been quite an impressive skyscraper with adjoining landing platform.

The belly of the massive ship had gouged an immense trench, cleaving the towering structure and underground roadway in two. The hope that anyone had survived the collapse was dim, but the frantic movement of equipment and personnel spoke differently. A group of crewmen in science blue were pulling a GeoProbe from an anti-grav sled, but as she passed the young man with the controller she noticed his hands shaking bad enough he almost dropped the device. She almost carried on- tricorders were being handed out to start the initial sweep for structural integrity and every second counted for any survivors.. But there was something wrong, moving closer she could see that he wasn’t just shaking, under the dust and grime his face was ashen and that even with the failing light it was clear he was crying.

She jostled his shoulder as she pushed into his personal space, turning him away from the officers unloading the sled and taking the controller from his hands, absently bringing the commands for the flight online.

‘Are you injured?’ It was the first thing that came to mind, though surely he wouldn’t have been brought out on S&R detail if he had.

His jaw clenched and he snatched the padd back, fingers surer across the screen than hers and with far less trembling then seconds before. ‘I have to be right? You should gear up yeoman- unless you think the people under the rubble could use a few more hours being crushed to death?’

He swept past her, the probe rising into the air under his command as he moved closer to worst of the destruction. She watched his back disappear under the harsh glare of the portable light units before grabbing a tricorder and joining the rest of the crew.

 

* * *

 

The first twenty-four hours after a major disaster are the most critical, it was still possible that people trapped in the rubble could be saved. The chances of survival after that time lessened dramatically after that small window. Landon had been staring at the ten foot borehole when her communicator beeped an acknowledgement that that window had irrevocably closed.

Something in her chest had tightened in anger at the fact that, whilst hundreds of people lay dying around her, she had been ordered to take a break by a Vulcan commander who had shown up out of nowhere with significantly more fresh faced personnel in tow. Her anger dissipated as quickly as it had flared. This was not her fault. There was not one living soul- human or alien- in this city, on this planet who would have wished this level of death and destruction on another.

Medics and fire crews ran back and forth through the area in spite of the lateness of the hour and the decrease in chances they would find anyone alive. The tunnel they’d managed to clear had only revealed six survivors. Shuttles launched from every hospital in north California had whisked those away. The rest were just meat wagons, corpses tagged and bagged and taken to cold storage until they could be identified and reunited with their families. There had been kids in those body bags.

Her eyes burned, and she dropped her canteen in favour of digging the heels of her palms into them to stop the tears. She had been awake closer to forty hours at this point, and though neither of her parents lived on the west coast she desperately wanted to speak to them, actually speak to them, rather than the quick message she’d fired off just to let them know she was okay ten hour previous.

A sense of movement had her lifting her head and he watched impassively as the science officer from earlier sat down heavily on the metal support next to her. He looked no better now than he had then, but he held out a protein bar in her direction as clear a sign of apology as any. She couldn’t help but be disgusted with herself when her stomach rumbled. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten, a continent and half a lifetime ago.

‘Thank you.' she muttered around the first mouthful. 'You should eat too.’

‘I think I’d be sick if I tried but thanks anyway.’ Absently she noted his east coast accent underneath the hoarseness that came with shouting and coughing your way through dust and smoke. He sounded as tired as she did. ‘I’m sorry about earlier.’ He continued in that same overused voice.

He looked like he needed to speak to someone, Landon knew she did- and no doubt there would be a whole raft of Fleet counsellors lining up to speak with them when the worst was cleared away or when they were released from this duty. She twisted to look at him, pulling the safety goggles off of her head as an excuse to look around and make sure they weren’t overheard.

‘I’m sorry too, I ambushed you with a personal question when we were in the middle of a crisis, when you didn’t even know who I was. It was totally unprofessional of me and I’d understand if you put me on report-’. He let out a horrible wet bark of laughter, a hand running nervously back through his hair, dislodging bits of gravel down the back of his uniform shirt.

‘Report you? God no, I- I just. I just can’t think straight right now. I definitely couldn’t then, I-’. He stopped, his hand dropping and the fingers of his right hand moving to fiddle with his left. A passing shuttle illuminated them briefly, and a flash of metal on his hand had her reaching out to stop the movement with her own. His fingers were cold from exposure under hers. A breeze had rolled in from the ocean, not normally a problem amongst the hundred tons of steel and glass that made up the sprawling city. Had made the city. Even with the metal carcass of the starship filling the space where homes and businesses should of been the chill seeped into the skin. Combined with the chill Martha felt from within she was surprised they weren’t all flash frozen statues in the ruins.

‘My name is Martha. What’s your name?’ The young man swallowed twice before answering.

‘Ryan, Danny Ryan. God.’ He let out a sob, curling in on himself as he shook, trying to make himself invisible to the hundreds of other hurting people still moving around them. Martha slid over, wrapping an arm across his shoulders and drawing him closer trying to warm him and keep him from shaking apart as much as she could. It took several minutes for the heaving sobs to subside, Ryan stayed braced against her, bent double with his hands digging into his scalp. She noticed the gleam of metal again, a wedding band. Her hand squeezed his shoulder involuntarily as she leaned close enough so that she couldn’t be overheard.

‘Have you called yet? It might be good to hear a familiar voice..’ Ryan’s hands clenched his hair reflexively before he sat up straight, eyes falling unseeing everything around them.

‘He was on Alcatraz, on a tour with his sister,’ he blinked, dropping his head to pull the communicator from his belt. The messages light was blinking innocuously, and Martha could only guess what was going through Ryan’s head that he hadn’t yet answered with even a brief message. ‘They’ll blame Starfleet. And then they’ll blame me, for being a part of the organisation that bought Nero and now this on us. I took away their son, and their daughter. They wouldn’t have even been here if I hadn’t.. I’ve ripped their family apart..’

Defeat. That was what seeped from him, in his mind he had killed his husband and sister-in-law. Martha inhaled sharply, holding it like a shield in the face of this new tragedy that wasn’t even hers to really be affected by. But she was whether she wanted it or not. This was a fellow officer, another human who had just been devastated by personal and professional loss, and then been ordered to suck it up as best he could in the hopes that his training might help others. But even a Starfleet officer could only hold up so long against this level of stress. And Ryan still hadn’t been able to speak to his loved ones with all the blame he’d built up in his mind and taken upon his shoulders.

‘Hey. Listen to me Mister- don’t go on thinking like that. Don’t you dare think that those messages aren’t meant for you, meant to find out whether you’re alright. For all you know right now his parents are mourning the loss of their son-in-law as well. They deserve to know you’re still alive don’t you think? Grief can warp someones mind so far from the facts that they take it out on the wrong person, sure, but no-one really knows what happened here yet. And it’s easier to make amends with the living than with the dead. Answer those messages, and deal with everything else later.’ Ryan’s gaze cleared, then settled on the communicator in his hand. Flipping it open he sent a quick all-points message back before snapping the device shut. He turned to her, calmer than before, though by no-means less grieved and gave her a short nod before the CO called them back to the task at hand.

**Author's Note:**

> This is really a test to see how much interest there is in these characters and story. Martha Landon was Pavel Chekov's love interest (and the only one I recall seeing apart from his ex) in the Original Series. My intention was to create a wider Starfleet organisation set in the new movie 'verse introducing original characters and expanding on ones from canon. 
> 
> Feedback on anything and everything in welcome.


End file.
